The Indian apparel industry has urged for manmade fibre (MMF)-based fabric at the right price to capture greater share in global apparel trade especially as India has an abundant supply of manmade fibre (MMF) and yarn.
The global market for MMF garments is US $ 500 billion, which includes US $ 170 billion for sportswear.
Dr. A. Sakthivel, Chairman, Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), said “India’s share in global apparel trade is very low. We need to do a lot to match up to the international requirements. We have enough MMF fibres and yarns but we are not having sufficient fabric, especially for sportswear and exports. The capacity and right pricing are must to become globally competitive.”
He was addressing a webinar ‘Increase in exports of MMF Garments’.
Indian apparel exporters are also of the strong view that India’s problem is in the value chain integration.
Reliance has to step in! The apparel exporters believe that while Reliance has the capability to do these fabrics, garment manufacturers have to see that the price points are right and the capacities are available. Unless Reliance steps in and takes up the initiative not only for value chain integration but also for setting up R&D centres and cooperating with garment exporters to create awareness and to create right fabric, industry is not going to take off.
Ravish Nanda, Co-founder, Alcis Sports, insisted on research and development (R&D) in this segment. “We don’t have requisite R&D centres in India. We use the best of the yarns made by Reliance; even then we have problems in the final fabric and we don’t know how to solve these issues. India lacks a lot in processing. We need help from countries like Taiwan and South Korea to help develop our infrastructure both in terms of technology and manpower,” he shared.
It is pertinent to mention here that there are a lot of opportunities to capture in India. India’s per capita consumption of synthetics is just about one-third of the global level and only one-fourth of China.
RD Udeshi, President (Polyester Chain), Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), said that Indian exports have remained constant over the last decade with mere 1 per cent CAGR, which is “not a very healthy sign.”
Textile export of US $ 36 billion in 2019 is only 4 per cent of world exports.
“India has a very low value-added end product exports and high share of raw material and intermediate product exports. Inadequate downstream processing capacity could be one of the key reasons for lower exports of value-added items,” he said.
Gunjan Sharma, CMO (Polyester Division), RIL and Sudhir Sekhri, Chairman (Export Promotion), AEPC also shared their views in the webinar.
